Jacqueline S. Homan
On August 4 2009, George Sodini shot up a gym full of women at an aerobic’s class before turning the gun on himself in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Within days of the shooting that left 3 women dead and 9 wounded, including the pregnant aerobics instructor, George Sodini’s online diary of his sexual frustration at being a “beta” male and his hatred for women and plans to go on a killing spree was made widely known.
Sodini was also a member the PUA community (Pick Up Artists) which advise men on how to lie/coerce/harass their way in between women’s legs (this is called “game.”) And it turns out that he had subscribed to huckster R. Don Steel’s seminars advising older beta males on how to “score” pretty young women that are young enough to be their daughters.
Unfortunately, there is a large pool of men out there with this entitlement attitude; and they’re mostly of the white and selfish middle to upper-middle class flavor.
One blog comprised of this “community” of males is riddled with over a thousand comments from men who hailed Sodini as a “hero” for teaching women a lesson: namely that not giving men — no matter how socially repulsive and hateful towards women — their “right” to sexual satisfaction, dead women are the “tax” society will have to pay. One poster, “Arpagus” said regarding Sodini:
I am calling him a hero for being a symbol for the consequences of denying men sex, not for killing those women. Obviously they didn’t personally deserve it. But something like this has to happen, perhaps hundreds of times over again, before feminists get the message. As Bhetti observed, it can easily go the other way and create more anti-male sentiment instead. There probably won’t be much sympathy, but maybe fear. From reading his blog it is so clear-cut that celibacy was the problem. (No wonder it has been taken down.) And even fear of the “nice guy” is an improvement. Fear can cause social change even if sexually frustrated men always will be met with the attitude that they don’t deserve to get laid and are basically human garbage as Bhetti believes.
I know the feminist media will try to emphasize his other issues and downplay the sexual frustration. Even so, his other issues mostly seem to result from an absent father (who was just a “sperm donor” in his words), and that is not supposed to be a problem according to the feminists either. So either way this is good press for the MRA movement.
These men all have one thing in common: they view women as “less than”, as objects less deserving of equal human and civil rights, and as something they have a “divine right” to.
One male poster, “whiskey”, who is probably only marginally slightly less selfish and Neanderthalic than the rest, said that men are not “investing in women” and this is the crux of the problem. But he still missed the boat. I responded with a post of my own. However, given that that blog is misogynist central and moderated, I don’t expect my reply to be published. Therefore, I am posting it here:
Viewing women as nothing more than reproductive chattel, as fuck holes that exist only for men’s benefit and sexual pleasure (while it’s to hell with our sexual pleasure, including our right to prevent unintended pregnancy which ruins our bodies and risks our health and lives — only to end up having to fight for child support); and viewing women as things to own instead of as equal partners of a species is not the way to “invest in women.”
Treating women like the human beings we are whose needs and feelings matter is a damn good start. But I am not seeing that from any of the men posting here.
Instead, I am seeing women being called “cunts”, “bitches”, “cameltoes”, “jezebel twats”, and “dumbasses” along with other pejoratives — all which imply that women somehow deserve to be punished for being children of a lesser god, that we aren’t even human enough in these men’s eyes for any kind of harm to us to matter.
According to the most recent census data, there are 44 million Americans living below the federal poverty level — 84% whom are women. Many are ending up permanently disabled or dying prematurely for lack of access to basic resources and things like medical and dental care.
Jobs considered “women’s work” don’t pay enough to live on, yet women who aren’t “pretty and thin enough” who get left on the shelf have no choice but to work to support themselves, and often a child or two (thanks to mostly beta “pump and dumpers”), and we don’t get to pay less to do all that than a man.
Yet, the majority of men posting here want all the free sex they can get (from only the most perfect-looking young babes) while promoting job discrimination, imbalanced power relationships in marriage/divorce, and the impoverishment of all women, while us women get nothing in return — not even the benefit of a commitment and equal access to the marital assets, including the checking account, and something “extra” for us once in awhile even though the men are entitled to their young mistresses on the sly, their expensive toys and hobbies while we get nothing. And that is somehow “fair?”
Listen up misogynists and selfish nitwits of all stripes who bitch about not “getting any”: everything isn’t all about you.
There is a lot of prejudice against fat women, against plain-looking women, against older women, against poor people, and against disabled people. There is also a stereotype that assigns such people to the category of “unfucakable”, or at least, “asexual.”
Yet many of us who fall into one or more of those categories end up having fulfilling sex lives and marriages. Is everything a bed of roses? No. But no one has a perfect life. That’s an illusion; just like our “meritocracy” and the American Dream.
George Sodini and these Mens’ Rights Advocates and PUA’s are a large part of the problem, not so much the victims of it. They see women as commodities with which to attain a higher social status in our class-stratified capitalistic society — a “trophy” with which to keep score of their masculinity, not as human beings.
There is a serious disconnect between their hatred of women and their desire for women. But they only desire women as inanimate sex toys that double as “arm candy” to inflate their egos, and then they wonder why they can’t “score” with the women who they claim to hate. By being selfish and inconsiderate, they’ve made themselves “unfuckable.”
No woman wants to go to bed with a man who really doesn’t give a shit about her — not even enough to ensure she enjoys the sex too, and enough to respect her right to not risk unwanted pregnancy which puts her body, wellbeing and life 100% at risk, not the man’s. It does not matter how much or little he makes or how “fit and trim” he looks.
George Sodini had so much more than 80% of those in this country who struggle, suffer in poverty (one paycheck away from homelessness) without access to health and dental care, never mind a decent house and a car. He had more than most in America ever got/will get the chance to have. He had a six figure a year salary at a cushy job with health and dental benefits, a nice car, a house in a middle class area, and a net worth of $250,000.
How many women in poverty would love to have the privilege of a nice smile with their natural teeth, like George Sodini, but don’t due to a real lack of equal opportunity for middle class jobs with health and dental benefits and many women don’t find a middle class male willing to commit and provide her with that via his good job? Let’s put things into perspective here.
These men are not being sexually ghettoized because of being poor, disabled, or physically repulsive. It’s more likely that they’re not getting laid because they’re misogynists who treat women like meatpuppets they somehow feel “entitled” to “have”; rather than treating women like people. We as a society need to start evolving beyond this patriarchal privilege shit and treat each other with respect, as human beings worthy of love, affection, and sex — not as a “score” or as a special class who is “owed” something that others are somehow not. As for the element out there who consider certain classes of people as “unfuckable”, you don’t have to participate in that.
When your goal is not to meet people to get to know, talk with, hang out with and maybe sleep with, but instead just to meet someone “hot” to masturbate inside of; you’re not trying to meet a person. You’re trying to meet an object, a thing, a sperm receptacle. You’re not looking for a hot girlfriend because you find her interesting and sexually attractive. You’re looking for a disposable fuck trophy. There’s no deeper, more debased commodification than that. It is important to recognize the link between this commodification of every aspect of our lives, and especially of an entire group of people (women) within capitalism’s architecture of aggression and competitiveness which reduces our collective humanity.
"Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie", by Jacqueline S. Homan
